The architecture of the original Internet was created long before communicating with billions of very simple devices such as sensors and appliances was ever envisioned. The coming explosion of these much simpler devices creates tremendous challenges for the current networking paradigm in terms of the number of devices, unprecedented demands for low-cost connectivity, and impossibility of managing far-flung and diverse equipment. Although these challenges are becoming evident now, they will pose a greater, more severe problem as this revolution accelerates.
The Internet of Things (IoT) architecture requires a much more organic approach compared with traditional networking because it represents an extreme frontier in communications. The scope and breadth of the devices to be connected are huge, and the connections to the edges of the network where these devices will be arrayed may be “low fidelity”: low-speed, lossy, and intermittent. Meanwhile, much of the communication may be machine-to-machine and in tiny snatches of data, which is the opposite of networks such as the traditional Internet.